August 20, 2025 • 59 mins
Maid, hero, heretic, saint - Joan of Arc is one of the most fascinating figures of the Middle Ages. This week, Danièle speaks with Deborah McGrady about Joan’s incredible life and death, her voice, and her complex and enduring legacy.
You can enrol in Danièle's online course Calamity and Change: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Century at https://medievalstudies.thinkific.com/courses/calamity-and-change
You can enrol in Danièle's online course Calamity and Change: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Century at https://medievalstudies.thinkific.com/courses/calamity-and-change
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred and three
of the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Sebolski. If
you've been listening to my series This Is History Presents
(00:22):
The Glass King, you'll know we're currently neck deep in
early fifteenth century France, where absolute chaos reigns, and I've
just introduced a new major player, even if he's still
at this moment a minor. You may want to keep
little Prince Charles in mind, because on today's podcast, we're
going to jump ahead to a story he could never
(00:43):
have imagined in those dark times. Because today we're going
to talk about one of my and pretty much everyone's
favorite figures from the Middle Ages, Joan of Arc. This week,
I spoke with doctor Deborah McGrady about the life and
afterlife of Joan of Arc. Debra is Professor of French
and the director of the Medieval Studies Program at the
(01:04):
University of Virginia. She's also the author of many books,
including Controlling Readers, Guillom de Masco and His Late Medieval Audience,
and The Writer's Gift or the Patron's Pleasure, The Literary
Economy in Late Medieval Friends. Her new book is Joan
of Arc The Life of a French cultural icon. Our
(01:25):
conversation on Jones's incredible life and death, her voice and
her legacy is coming up right after this. Well, welcome
Debrah to talk about Joan of Arc. First of all,
I'm excited to talk about Joan of Arc, but secondly
so excited to meet you. And we're already like chatting away.
We need to get to work. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you so much, Danielle. I'm so thrilled to be here.
I'm a huge fan of your podcast, been listening to
it for years.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That is so nice to hear, especially from somebody who
I also respect. Okay, I mean I would love to
do this all day, but let's get to it. Yes,
all right, So Joan of Arc. I think there's going
to be people who are listening to this podcast. You
know a lot about her, but many people who have
just kind of heard of her. So let's start from
the beginning. What's happening in France and when are we
(02:18):
talking about.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Okay, that is a very big question because France, the
Kingdom of France, is a mess at this moment. So
I think the best thing to say from the beginning
is that we are in the throes of what we
call today the Hundred Years War. So when we talk
about the dates of that, you're already going to see
it's bigger than one hundred years. We sort of say
(02:41):
thirteen thirty seven to fourteen fifty three. But some people
you know, point out rightly that this is a problem
that starts in ten sixty six. The problem is the
following in the late thirteen twenties thirteen thirties, the King
of France dies and he has no sign and no brothers,
(03:02):
and so there's not an obvious king to follow him.
And this opens the door to many people presenting themselves,
among them the King of England, representatives from England, and
so this debate already opens up, and what will be
decided is that the cousin of the deceased king, Charles Philip,
(03:24):
will become King of France. And that is a that
is a quick resolution that doesn't stick. And so over
the decades following we constantly have this pushback from England,
in particular, claiming the right to the throne, and this
will lead to some very famous battles your listeners might
(03:46):
know the Battle Cries, the Battle of Poitier, where the
King of France has taken prisoner in the thirteen fifties
fourteen fifteen Asancours and the nobility of France decimated. But
let's leap because what happens particularly is that in fourteen
twenty we have what's called the Treaty of Troy, and
(04:10):
the Treaty of Troy does something really quite shocking. The
sitting King, Charles the sixth, agrees to the following when
he dies, as opposed to his son becoming king, the
King of England, Henry the fifth will become king of
France and England. That's where we are at this moment.
(04:32):
And to make this stick, he disinherits his son, his
son Charles, for many reasons, but among them and it's
all debated, but the biggest one is that Charles has
been accused of having his cousin John the Fearless assassinated.
And that is not just a side thing, because in fact,
(04:52):
just to make this a little messier, Burgundians, when the
Duke was assassinated, align them themselves with the English. And
so in fourteen twenty, when we have this Treaty of
Troy signed France, you know it's in a devastating situation.
I'm going to skip over a whole bunch of messy
(05:13):
things to come to the moment that Joan of Arc
arrives on the scene. At that moment, England has become
even more ambitious with the Burgundians. They control the top
half of France, basically think of the Loire River as
a natural barrier. But they're not satisfied with that. They
want to push beyond the Loire where there are spaces
(05:37):
faithful to the disinherited Charles. And they are currently laying
siege to or Leon and they have been doing so
for several months. The people are starving in Orleon, and
this is going to be the catalyst. This is going
to be the event that provokes Joan to step forward
(05:58):
and to head out on her mission.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So here here we have the stage set, we have
the English and Burgundians and Alliance, and they're taking over everything.
We have to stop them. And so we have a
seat going on at Orlean. So this girl appears. What's happening?
What do we know about her? How's she disappearing out
of nowhere?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That is the eternal question. It is a question that's
been being asked since she appeared on the world stage.
Who is she? I should say, already we know so
much about her, and yet really don't know a whole lot.
We think we know a lot about Joan of Arc
because we have documents that tell us that we're hearing
(06:40):
exactly what she said, But what do we know? So
when she's at trial, she tells us a lot about
her past. She tells us, for instance, that she was
around thirteen when she started hearing voices. She is from
a small village Do Remi that is in the territory,
(07:01):
and therefore she is in the territory that's controlled by
the Anglo Burgundians. Her king is Henry, the sixth King
of France and England, and she's been hearing these voices
for years. She tells us that around the age of seventeen,
the voices have just become so strong and the situation
is so dire that she decides to run away from home,
(07:25):
and she makes her way to a town called Vocular
that is a day's trip away from her and this city,
this town is a holdout in this Anglo Burgundian territory,
a holdout for Charles, and she makes her way there
and convinces the captain that he needs to send her,
(07:48):
send her on her way to the disinherited Charles. So
about Joan, that's what we know. We know a few
other things. We know that, for instance, she's not this
poor past. We know that her family has a pretty
impressive status within her community. Her father is a representative
(08:08):
of that community. We know, for example, that he had
a lot of sheep and cattle, which suggests a level
of importance. But we also know that she was illiterate,
which is not surprising, and that she was very develout.
So those are kinds of the certain things that we
know about her.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yes, And one thing that maybe is worth mentioning here
is that she's not from a place called arc This
is her last name, or at least her dad's last name. Right, Yes,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You know. One of the one things that we think
we know that we actually don't realize to not be
true is that her name is not Joan of arc Y.
She tells us at the trial none of it is correct, honestly,
because she was called Jeanette, little Jonie or Jonie. And
she tells us that in her community you actually and
(09:00):
go by the name of your father. Anyway, you went
by the name of your mother, who was ome made.
So yeah, her name, her name isn't working, but it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
We should note that in her lifetime, no one really
cared about her real name. They called her the Maid,
Lapus said. And one of the reasons they're asking that
question at trial, as a matter of fact, for her
to name herself is because they don't want to call
her the maid, right, they don't want to give her
that illustrious title that it has become for her.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yes, well, no one remembers Madonna's last name either, right,
so it's less important. Okay, So she shows up, she
says I'm here to leave the friend army, and everyone says, sure,
that's fine.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
What happens, Yeah, that's not the way it happens. Let's see,
how does it happen. One of the things that we
need to keep in mind, and people ignore this, is
that she's not the first woman to come forward saying
I have a vision from God. As a matter of fact,
there are so many women doing it at this time
(10:03):
that the church has organized and created a document to
help the clergy interview these women. It's called discernment of spirits,
and Deborah Frioli does a wonderful job in early debate
on Joan of Arc of explaining why that's important to
her story. So there's already a tradition of this, a
(10:27):
tradition of young women, specifically young women who are virgins,
and that's what Poussin the maiden or maid means, who
have this tradition. So the fact that she comes forward
and says to the Captain Baudricour, look, I have a vision.
I've been sent from God. It's something you really don't
(10:47):
fool around with, and it's one of the reasons why
they send her forward. Now I'm going to say something
else too. The other thing is we are in a
terrible situation in the French Kingdom at this point point,
and honestly, it's only a miracle that's going to change
the situation. So if you have someone come forward and
say I'm except from God, that sounds like a miracle
(11:09):
to me. And there's a third thing that people don't
talk about ever, except for I would say Bernard Shaw
in his place Saint Joan from the nineteen twenties, and
that is that clearly, in my opinion, Joan of Arc
was a very persuasive young woman, and that is possible.
She had to have not just the spiritual on her side,
(11:30):
but she also had to really be a persuasive figure
to convince all of these men to listen to her.
So I think that that's kind of there's a build
up for her. She is persuasive and the kingdom needs
a miracle.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes, well, I think that it's probably something we're going
to get into a bit later where some people are
saying she's so innocent, she's just a girl. But this
woman is incredibly intelligent, and you can tell this from
the way that she starts to deal with the doctor
of the church, who are interrogating her many times later.
But this is her first time she's tested by religious people,
and she passes, and she gets passed on to the Dauphin,
(12:10):
and then there's a little story about meeting him. Right
she's introduced to the Dauphin. But there's a trick here.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
There is a trick here, and it's a trick being
played on her, and that is rumor, it's a legend,
maybe truth, but that he traded places with someone. And
then she walks into the room and despite having traded places,
she is able to identify Charles among the crowd, and
(12:37):
this will be considered at the time one of her
first miracles by some people. So that happens, and then
she meets with him privately, she talks with him. She
must persuade him enough that he thinks, I think I'm
going to pass her on, and so he passes her
(12:59):
on to a group of clergymen representing the church, but
representing the Catholic Church, a part of the church that
supports Charles claims to the throne. And that's important because
we're going to see a division within the Catholic Church
as a matter of fact, as it concerns Joan. So
she's going through the stages. She's going through the stages.
(13:22):
But yeah, there's that story about her recognizing Charles.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's one of those things where you know it's probably
a legend, but it's so good you can't pass it up.
We have to add that story in there. So she
is trained up and she's thrown at Orleans, and she
must have all these commanders looking at her like who
is this person? But she goes for it. So what
do we know about maybe her tactics at Orleans, she's
trained up a little bit, she's gotten jacked, she's headed
(13:51):
for Orleon.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yes, yes, what about her tactics at or Leon? I'm
not very well positioned to talk about the literal tactics
that she used. But what I will say is that
twenty five years after her execution, there was a trial
of the trial, and we might come back to that later,
but at that trial, testimonies were collected, and among them
(14:17):
several from the captains and soldiers who worked with her,
And what we learned from them is that, contrary to
what we often believe, they found her to be really skilled.
We have captains say that she was better than any
general they had ever seen in their life. We had
(14:38):
squires say that they were just amazed at how she
would run out onto the field in the front, raising
her sword or holding her lance. We have people talk
about her training in anticipation of Orleans. We have one
of her squires talk about how she met every evening
(15:00):
with the captains to talk about strategy, and one particularly
says she was particularly gifted with canons. So we have
the sense that she had a military mind. Often that's said,
and it was said by the captains at the time,
they said, there's your proof she was sent by God,
(15:22):
because how could she have that? But you know, I
tend to think that you have that case.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Today.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You have men and women who are savvy about military
strategy just from the get go, and so it seems
that that was her case. So again, but I will
to come back to legends and miracles. One of her
second miracles is said to have been that when she
arrives at Orleon, the wind is going the wrong direction
(15:50):
for them to advance on Orleon, and one of the
captains says, she goes off and she prays, and he
couldn't believe it. The wind changed and they were able
to advance with the attack. So I can't get into
the strategy about it. The strategy is out of my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
That's okay, that's okay. This is probably a moment where
if Kelly Defreese is listening, he's like, this is me. Yes,
Kelly has written a book about that for people who
want to know specifically about strategy. But one of the
things that is important strategy are not because it is
vital and something that was always thought of as being
important in the Middle Ages. So it's not a surprise
is morale, and that is something that unquestionably she has
(16:33):
lifted when she goes to the siege, she lifts the
siege of Orleans, and then it's just like a tidal
wave behind her because for the first time in a
long time, they think maybe we can win this.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
That is absolutely true, and Orleon. She's remembered for Leon,
and until this day, every May a city of Orleans
there's a huge celebration about her. But that's not the
only battle she won there. They went on to take
several towns along the Loire River that had been recently
(17:07):
taken by the English, and so she has a whole
series of victories. She and the army with her so
much so that the moment comes where she says, you know,
we're ready to move on. We are ready now to
really declare Charles as the true king of France. And
(17:28):
they're going to head out. They're going to head north
to France, which is in Anglo Burgundian territory. And along
the way you're going to see that they're sending letters
in advance to cities saying you know, we're going to
take you, and many of these cities say, no, need
to take us, we're here, we're going to hand over
the keys right through. So her reputation is preceding her,
(17:52):
and she is really marking a major change both in
the war itself. But as you said in the.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Morale, well, one of the things that you spend a
lot of time on in your book is her own words,
which are slippery and hard to pin down. But she's
sending letters, as you're mentioning at this time, they're spicy.
What is she saying in her letters at this time?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So you know, we know of twenty seven letters that
are said to have been dictated by Joan, because of
course Joan is illiterate. All of the letters that we have,
yeah some of them. One of her first, her first
and most famous letter, is a letter to the English,
and this is coming right after the Church has said, okay, Charles,
(18:39):
this is what we refer to as the Plotier conclusions,
and they say to Charles, you know you need to
give her an army and send her to au Leon.
And immediately thereafter we have this letter addressed to the
English where she says, the maid is here to tell
you you get out or we're going to take you.
(19:00):
And so it's a very aggressive letter. Now, one of
the things that I talk about in my book is
that we really need to be careful with this, and
we need to understand that maybe she is dictating. I'm
sure I have no problem imagining that. Joan said, Now
we can write the English and tell them we're on
our way. But she's going through a secretary, and we
(19:21):
know who that secretary is. And when we read that letter,
it is very clear that someone is helping her write it.
The rhetoric is very evolved. It is very typical for
this type of war announcement, which are required, and she's
making lots of references. So what I try to talk
(19:42):
about is this fact that first we have her voice
being used and in that particular letter, for instance, it
will come up at her trial and they will read
the letter out and Joan will say, yes, that's the
letter I dictated, except for three parts. There are three
words in there I never said. So we see that
(20:04):
it's not all Joan. They're helping her shape her identity.
And one of the arguments is that from the very
beginning there is an effort to shape her as an
iconic figure.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yes, I think that is unquestionable, and I think you've
really laid that argument out well in your book. Okay,
So she reaches sort of the pinnacle of her career,
she goes to Rant, she gets the Dophin crowned. What
is this moment like for her? What is this moment
like for the dolphin?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, what is this moment like? Well, it's incredibly important.
You know. It's one thing to say you're king, and
Charles had been saying this. It is another thing to
go to Rence and to repeat the traditions that's from
the very beginning of being crowned there. This is an
extraordinary moment for him. It should have been an extraordinary
(20:57):
moment for Joan, but the evidence suggest it was not
at all. Evidence suggests that she was not really allowed
to participate. And that's not too surprising because it is
a ceremony that usually doesn't allow women. But we really
mark this as a point where the separation in the
intentions of now King Charles and the intentions of Joan
(21:22):
go opposite directions. And what I mean by that is
that Joan says, apparently, now we're ready to take Paris.
It's great, we've crowned you in Rance, but the real
throne is in Paris. Meanwhile, we know that Charles wasn't
interested in going back to Paris. He hated Paris, and
he was actually in negotiations to see to Paris to
(21:45):
the Burgundians. And so a lot of tension comes up
at this point, and we see a growing separation between
these two figures and an increasing isolation. Joan is really
not finding her place, and that contradicts a lot of
what we think a lot of the stories that are told,
but that is the reality.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, And I think it goes to show just how
much of an outsider she is, because anyone who has
met Charles knows he will just turn on you as
soon as he gets what he wants. He's done this,
I mean, he's assassinated his cousin, So like, I think
that there are a lot of people that are like, WHOA,
don't trust this guy, But she's she's so convinced, and
(22:28):
she has faith in him, I think, not just in
her voices, but she has faith in him. He's the king,
He's supposed to do what's right, but he doesn't necessarily
do what's right for her. So people may not actually
know this much about the story, but things do start
to go off the rails for her. People start actually
leaving her out of campaigns right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Exactly, and she is specifically Charles will be sending her
further and further away from things. Now. She's determined about Paris, however,
and so she leaves without being sanctioned by the king.
She leaves, and she goes to Paris with her little
group of faithful followers, and she's outside of Paris and
(23:12):
she's waiting for the king to show up, and during
that time she's writing letters. Now we're beginning to see
within these dictated letters a difference between the official stance
of the royal court, the royal French court, and Joan.
And we see Joan writing, for example, to Rence and
(23:34):
to other cities, saying, I'm taking Paris and I don't
agree with the negotiations that Charles has made with the
Duke of Burgundy. I don't trust the Duke of Burgundy.
So we have evidence, not often studied, but we have
evidence of this division being created. But note she's never
(23:54):
going to turn on Charles, and that comes back to
your point. She believes that Charles is meant to be
the King of France. Whether she thinks he's doing it,
the right way, or he's up to the battle, that's
another issue. But she's clear minded, and he is supposed
to be the king of all of the Kingdom of France.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yes, and this is something that's never occurred to me before.
But maybe it has something to do with the fact
that she is so persuasive that she's just like really
frustrated with this guy. Why is he not understanding, like,
this is her mission and she's explained it to him.
Why is he not showing up to Paris? This just
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Absolutely, absolutely, she is utterly certain. Now. One thing that
is also interesting is that she's far exceeded her mission.
She will acknowledge at trial that she was not told
to go to Paris. She says, the voices told me
(24:53):
to go to to Leon. The voices told me to
take the king to France. She admits that the voices
did not tell her to go to Paris, and so
this becomes a real contentious point. And the fact is
is that he finally does show up at Paris, He
finally okays for her to advance on Paris, and it
(25:17):
is a route. It is a disaster, and she is
wounded for the second time because she was wounded in
Orleans as well. And this is really the beginning of
the end of Jones's story really on the public stage, because,
as my book says, if we stop just with the
living Jone, we've missed really a big story because she
(25:38):
keeps living on. She's alive and well in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Okay, it's true and one of the things that maybe
it is worth mentioning. When we imagine Paris, you imagine
like the city, but it was so formidable at this
moment that very difficult to take. So it's no shame
on not being able to take Paris. It was just
a formidable to try and take in the first place. Okay,
(26:02):
So she's still trying to take down, She's still trying
to be involved, even though she's getting more and more son.
She gets captured, yes, and this I think is also
confusing to people because she gets captured by the Burgundians.
And I think if people hadn't heard your preamble here
about this alliance that the Burgundians have with the English,
(26:23):
maybe it's confusing. So she's captured by Burgundians. What happens next?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
She's captured nearly almost a year, just a little over
a year after the Siege of Orleans. So we're talking
about a very brief time on that public stage, captured
by the Burgundians, sold to the English. The English are
then persuaded by the church, by the Catholic Church to
(26:52):
hand her over because they suspect her of heresy. And
so the English hand or over. We have an amazing
level are issued by the King of England and France, Henry,
and he says, I'm handing her over, but if you
don't do what we expect to be done, we're taking
(27:13):
a wreck. So they hand her over and over the
next year she will be interrogated and then tried for
heresy by representatives of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yes, and at this moment Charles is scrambling to get
a ransom together and get a rescue party together. Right, Well,
we don't.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Have any evidence of that. What we do have evidence
of is that one of her companions, soldier companions Lay,
apparently was trying to gather money. We have record of
a letter that she sent when she was in captivity
asking one of the cities to send her money. We
(27:58):
presume it's because she thought that there might be some ransom,
but we don't have anything. We have no record of
Charles trying to help get Joan out of there. It's
a disturbing silence.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yes, And you mentioned in the book people are kind
of loath to look at this moment, but I think
we should look at this moment. So she's this nineteen
year old girl, she's in masculine clothes, she's got a
man's haircut, and so she's already sort of a freak
in people's minds. She's being captured, she's been jailed by
(28:35):
her mortal enemies, who she's poked dead with a stick,
and so this is a dangerous, horrible moment for anybody,
but especially for this girl. So it's not her female
in this I'm referring to. It's the fact that she's young,
and she's never been in this situation before, and her
captor's wife has to tell the soldiers leave her alone.
(28:56):
And so I think this gives you a sense that
this is a terror again for anybody, but especially for
someone so young who's never never been in a situation
like this before.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Danielle, I think that we have to recognize that she
becomes unbelievably vulnerable precisely because she is a girl and
it's so disturbing I can't I read it today, and
I get really upset when I'm studying the trial because
I realize that she was just put in such a
(29:30):
vulnerable position. You mentioned the captor's wife coming forward and saying,
don't rape her. She needs to protect it, and her
vulnerability as a woman will really be spotlighted, and her
situation that is being dressed in men's clothing and with
(29:51):
short hair will become key to her representation not as
a warrior, but as a monstrass. And those are the
words monster and monstrosity that will be used both by
the King of England and by this court that comes
together to try her.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I think you're making great points here. I think I'm
always wanting to edge away from the idea if I
say somebody is weak and frightened, it's not their femaleness
that makes them weak, I guess, is what I'm saying.
But yes, absolutely, her gendered body is the crux of
the whole thing when it comes to how are we
going to destroy this woman? Because that's the mission. We
(30:33):
need to destroy this woman. This is the way to
do it, This is the easiest way to do it,
and that's exactly what they go for.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's right. And so one of the things I talk
about in the book that has not received a lot
of attention. We look at the trial and we're just
so amazed that we have our words right then select citation,
but we don't take a lot of time to think
about how that trial orcs straits her presence in the courtroom.
(31:03):
And one of the things that I think we need
to keep in mind is that, for example, they keep
her in men's clothing. And this is really key because
we have a report from a historian historiographer at the
court of Burgundy that when she was first captured. This
is a terrible story. It's very upsetting that she was
(31:24):
brought before the Duke of Burgundy and she was stripped naked,
and the historiographer details her naked body. That's already terribly upsetting.
But you know, when I was thinking about that, I thought,
they're so insistent that there's a woman under that clothing.
So why did they put her back in men's clothing?
(31:47):
Why did they keep her And as I say, she
was captured in armor, someone gave her clothing men's clothing?
Was it her own clothing? Don't know, we don't know,
but she was put in men's clothing, and when she
arrives before the court in February, she walks into that
(32:08):
room in men's clothing. We don't know if they were
clean or dirty. I suspect they were dirty. She has
chained as if she's some kind of dangerous, monstrous figure,
and she's brought into that room with two guards on
each side of her. So there's a real effort to
insist on the fact that this is a girl dressed
(32:32):
as a man.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Absolutely. I think that is so important because there's one
point where you have this in your book where they're like,
do you want a dress, and she's like, yes, give
me a dress. I don't need it right now, and
I'm wearing armor, so I'll put it on. And then
they're like, well, no, that's against what we're trying to prove.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And even more than that, I just have to point
out that that's in the first days she says, give
me a dress, and then suddenly we read the trial
that suddenly, for no appair at reason, the day's interrogation ends,
and I like to think, why, you know, I don't believe,
And Daniel Hobbins makes this point. I don't believe that
(33:12):
everyone in that court was against Joan Fooley. I think
there might have been some voices that were like, this
is a young woman, come on, give her a break.
And when she said that, I can imagine that some
of them said give her the dress. I can imagine
that it went into pandemonium. And we have testimony from
the notary later that said, yeah, there were a lot
(33:35):
of times I couldn't keep up with what was being
said because people are screaming in all directions. But she says,
give me a dress, and they do not, and comes
the crux of the accusations against her.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yes, And I don't think that we are spending too
much time on this because I think one of the
things we're talking about her legend as well. One of
the things people say is like she's burned as a witch.
There is no witchcraft involved here at all. And I
think that she had been through a trial before this,
not a trial, but an investigation before this. They said
that her voices were holy, so it's really not even
(34:10):
about that either. They had it out for her. She
was going to be destroyed for something, and it really
is this stressing in men's clothes presenting herself and doing
manly things. That is really a big problem for people.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
It is a big problem. But I will say this
and again Daniel Hobbins makes this point that these men
who are interrogating and trying her, they are doing due diligence,
and in the end they make sure if you read
carefully the doctrine of discernment of spirits and then you
(34:46):
look at the questioning and the final charges, they make
it very clear there's good reason to see her as
a heretic. She does these things. Now. The image, however,
is also extremely important, so they do their due diligence
and prove her to be a heretic. But her image,
presenting her NonStop and court in men's clothing, it's making
(35:10):
a profound visual point.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yes, again, heresy is an important part of it. Not
trying to downplay it, but it's I guess it's hard
to show what is the final straw. And I think
it's both of these things together, not one so far
above the other that we're saying like, it's definitely this thing.
Thank you for keeping me honest on track, because I'm
I want to be communicating this clearly and I'm glad
(35:34):
that you're keeping keeping me honest. Okay, So let's talk
about the trial transcript, because this is a fascinating one
of the most fascinating documents I've ever come across. Here
she is and she's speaking, and one of the things
that you said we really need to be careful of
is like, is this her voice or not? So tell
us what are some of the things you have to
consider looking at this and trying to understand her voice?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Great question. The trial record we have have was created
after her execution. It is based on the notes of
the notaries in the room, and we can't imagine that
they're taking precise notes. I already evoked the challenges they face.
They're taking shorthand, and that shorthand was meant to help
(36:21):
the jury, if you will, or the interrogators at the
end of the day, to think what do we need
to ask again tomorrow? Right, So that's the basis of it.
It's produced in fourteen thirty one, after her execution. And
one of the things that has always been said is, oh,
we have Jones words, and you know, we can hear
(36:42):
Joan tell her own story. But one of the points
I make is that we do have direct citation, but
it's very selective directcitation, and I can guarantee you that
anything they cite directly it is not to make us
feel compassion for Joan. It's to show she's a heretic.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So, for instance, in the first few days we have
over and over again, it's quite tedious. We constantly hear
how she refuses to take the oath. Why is that
what we're going to spend all our time talking about?
Because that goes to the point that she is not
respecting the church. And so when we read that document,
(37:29):
the notary tells us in fourteen fifties, everything that's in
that text is true. He says, she said it, I
went over it, she went over it. She even listened
to the text read back to her and approved it.
But that doesn't mean that we can take it as
(37:49):
transparent truth. And I think that's one of the great
challenges here. We go to the trial record to try
to bring justice to an injustice done to Joan of arc,
but we need to remember that we're using a document
that was intended to confirm that she is a heretic.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, And I think one of the things that really
jumps out is the moments where she's frustrated or she's obstinate,
where she's like, why aren't you writing that down? I
just said that that makes me look good. Why aren't
you not writing that down? And it's so she's so frustrated.
But I think it probably is meant to color the
testimony so that you feel like, Wow, she's so obstinate.
(38:33):
She's very unwomanly and very anti Catholic.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Absolutely, So I get to teach the trial of Joan
of Arc to my students and I let them read
it and just come in and tell me what they think.
They always come in and go, she's so rambunctious, she's
so outspoken, And then we slowly unwrap and look more
closely to realize, I think it's not rambunctious. Was the
(38:57):
message the authors wanted you to have. And one of
the things that happens with this trial record is they
in fact make five copies, of which we have three today.
And these copies of this trial are really complex. They
are surrounded by a lot of documentation that is intended
(39:18):
to help any reader understand you are not supposed to
admire this young woman. As a matter of fact, one
of the last text in There is just a brief
little paragraph to let you know that right after her execution,
a religious figure, a clergyman protested, A friar protested, and
(39:39):
he's jailed. He's put in jail on bread and water
for challenging the court. So if you didn't get the
message there, it is do not question the decision that's
been made here.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yes, and I think this comes back around to that
idea of the hair as he has to be proved
because it had been disproved before, so we have to
prove it again. And so it is very meticulous. Here
are the points in which she strayed from church doctrine. Okay,
she's actually brought out she's going to be executed, and
she recants, and I think this is something that people
(40:13):
forget as well, and I think this is so important.
She is about to be executed and she backs down
and she recants and says, I was wrong. I will
take the women's dress, just let me pray among women.
And these voices were demons. I recognize that now, and
I just think that this is just such an important
moment in the understanding of this person that we can't
(40:34):
forget about this moment.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yes, because she does recant, and then she's sentenced to
life in prison and not in a women's prison, and
she is required to change into women's clothing and she's
put into a prison where her guards are the English,
and just a few days later, she recants, She abjures
(41:00):
what she had said, and they come to her cell
and somehow she's dressed again in men's clothing and she says,
I was wrong. Out of fear of fire, I told
you I no longer believed in my voices, but I do.
I believe in everything I said. And she specifically says
everything that I said in the trial that's in the
(41:23):
book I stand by. And this has dire consequences because
now she is a relapsed heretic, and this happens very quickly.
She is very quickly excommunicated. And when she's excommunicated, this
is a public event. Is happening. They excommunicator publicly, and
(41:44):
lo and behold, representatives of the English government are standing
there ready. As a matter of fact, they have a stake,
They have it all set. They take Joan and without
doing the civil trial that should have occurred, they immediately
execute her right then and there.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
What do you think happened? Because I think if I'm
remembering this correctly, When they go to see her a
few days later, she says, you broke your promises to me,
and therefore I'm taking it all back. I believe in
my voices. I don't care about this fire anymore. Burmi,
if you have to, what do you think happened?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
That's a really good question. I think it's probably one
of the core points where everyone has their own interpretation
of it. She says that she has betrayed her voices,
she has betrayed God. Others will say she just saw
(42:45):
this is going to be endless torture. There are people
who will say, twenty five years later, look, she was
being threatened with rape. And then other people will say
she thought she could be powerful enough to push back
and that she still had a little bit of power
so that she could say, you know, you're going to
do right by me. But whatever the reason that inspired her,
(43:09):
she does say in the end, she says that you know,
would she would rather die than live this endless time
as a prisoner. That's a line that people don't like
to hear because it sounds like she gave up, you know,
she lost hope. Who knows who knows what happens, but
(43:30):
she didn't have another chance to back down on that.
It was done at that point.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes, So what was the mood as she's being executed?
Speaker 2 (43:40):
What do we know? We don't know a lot, but
some of the things we know. Some of the things
we can surmise from what results. Well, I've already told
you that a friar immediately protests. We find from the
testimony later it just seems very poignant accounts from people
(44:01):
who were there, old men now who say, I was
in my twenties and thirties, I couldn't bear it. I
had to walk away, I couldn't watch it. Others say
that even even the English soldiers were crying. Rumor that
some of the men of the church were saying, we've
made a major mistake, We've burnt a saint. So there
(44:23):
was a lot of crisis going on there. You know,
it's one thing to talk about killing and hating someone,
it's another to see them bred at the stake. And
in Paris, this is being publicized so whole. In Paris,
it's being publicized, and there's a whole event going on there.
(44:43):
The news is traveling fast and far, and part of
writing up the trial is precisely because the news spreads
so quickly and people are so divided about whether this
was right or wrong, that they produced that trial record
to defend themselves. As I mentioned in the book, a
(45:05):
couple months after this, an intrepid traveler from the Burgundian
court arrives in Constantinople and he tells us one of
the first things he's asked is did this Joan of
Arc girl really exist? And did you really kill her?
So it was a big and debatable topic, and that
(45:25):
debate did not end. It did not end with her execution.
And I think that's one of the most powerful things
they thought. If they burned her, they destroyed all evidence
of her. They threw all of the ashes into the river,
and all of her clothing, everything in her cell they
got rid of. But they could not kill the story.
(45:45):
They definitely could not kill the story. And that's why
she lives, that's why her legend continues.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yes, yes, they're meticulous about this. I've been spending a
lot of time with the man who becomes Charles the Seventh,
and he escape this legacy of Joan either and there's
probably a lot of people giving him the side eye
for allowing this to happen in ways that he didn't
need to. So what you're destering to is Charles has
been on the throne for a while and he's like,
(46:13):
it's time to rehabilitate this woman. So what happens in
the fourteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
In the fourteen fifties, this is coming from outside of
the court. So you see an Orleone and especially Jones family,
her brothers and her mother begin petitioning that we should
revisit this case, and so we will have a trial
in the fourteen fifties. It's important that we can do this.
(46:40):
They can do this because they've just taken hul and
so now they have access to the documents, and so
Charles the Seventh will sanction. He will sanction this investigation.
It's very legal because they don't retry Joan, they try
(47:01):
the trial. The case is the trial was not conducted correctly,
and so to that end, they begin gathering witness reports
and I mentioned those earlier. They're going to go to
Doheimi or Leon. They're going to talk to soldiers, they're
going to talk to her captors, they're going to talk
(47:24):
to the nerve, They're going to gather hundreds of witness
testimonies to prove especially that this was a misguided trial
and that they did not follow the rules. But among
the questions they're asking, they want to make sure that
everybody understands that Joan was a victim, that she was
(47:48):
a good Christian girl, and that she was a victim.
And I think that's one of the one of the
many things that frustrates me about her story, because that
second trial, that was incredible, because as you mentioned, it's
often called the rehabilitation trial. It's recognized as rehabilitating Joan.
But I just find it so disappointing that that trial
(48:11):
takes her, takes the heretic and makes her a victim.
And I would have much rather her come out of
that as a war hero, for example. And other people
might say I would have much rather her come out
as as a saint. As your listeners may or may
not know, she's not going to become a saint until
(48:33):
nineteen twenty. It's highly debatable, but it's something that comes
from the outside. This retrial, it takes several years, is
fourteen fifty two to fourteen fifty six, Charles the Seventh Sanctions,
It and endorses it. It's good for him, because there's
nothing good about being on a throne and being put
there by a heretic. You do kind of have to
(48:55):
fix that little storyline. So that's how that plays out.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yes, well, I mean, if you're gonna rehabilitate someone in
this center, you've got to take all of the things
that make her free kish off of her. So we
have to make her very orthodox and very girly. And
so one of the things that you explore in the
book is her legacy afterwards. And for a while, there
are a lot of pictures of her looking very gurly.
(49:21):
She's got this long hair and she's got a long dress,
and she's like looking heavenward as she's being tied to
this stake. But then she morphs again and she never
stops morphing. But there is a push in the early
nineteen hundred's to get her made a saint. What's going
on here, So it's very much linked to the political
(49:42):
situation France. One of the reasons the book really focuses
on the legacy in France is because, my goodness, the
history of Joan in France there's just so many layers.
There's such sedimentation, and so it really starts with the
Franco Prussian War in the eighteen seventies eighteen seventy seventy one,
(50:05):
because Lorraine, where Jonas from, becomes highly contested territory and
Joan emerges as an iconic figure. She's also going to remain.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
This national iconic figure through the First World War and
throughout this. In the eighteen nineties we really start seeing
the first push from the Bishop of Arleon Dupernun to
have her canonized, and it's always going to be linked
to this issue of her being a French national figure
(50:39):
and a saint. And between the wars there is a
push from the French right because the left is gaining
important grounds politically and they are working with the Vatican
to push Joan forward in fear that she is going
to be co opted by the left. And so she
(51:01):
becomes a very political figure already at the moment that
she becomes a saint, and you just cannot unravel the
political and the religious component of this. And today she's
considered one of France's patron saints. Right, so again you
(51:23):
may know your listeners may know that in the nineteen
eighties she became the symbol of the far right Full Nasionan,
which is now the Rassin brumon Nan, a very far
right xenophobic movement, and so she's always been linked to.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
This, Yes, And it's interesting when you think about it,
because I mean, I've done a bunch of episodes lately
about people who are not who we think they are,
and for someone like Joan, who is very much about
let me tell you who I am, so many people
have I've been telling her who she is over time,
and so it's just very interesting for somebody who was
(52:05):
very concerned about her identity at least as far as
it was useful to her project, that other people are
telling her who she is. Now.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Half of the book is really looking at that legacy,
and it's looking especially at artists, writers, sculptors, painters, etc.
Dramatists who take on Joanes's story. And I think part
of it is so often because these individuals recognize, Gosh,
for all the effort and all of the documentation we
(52:37):
have of Joan's voice, there's this sense that her story
has always been co opted. And I try to make
the point that this isn't new, it's not modern. This
starts when she steps on the stage, it generates a
great deal of things, a desire in many to try
to bring justice to her story. And what I found,
(52:59):
especially in which goes into another route your listeners maybe
they'll read these chapters, is to really notice that when
you pick up Joan and you decide to tell her story,
you find that there are so many other issues that
come up, and she really becomes a catalyst for asking
very big social, philosophical, spiritual, political questions. She makes that possible,
(53:27):
and to me, that's one of the amazing parts of
her legacy.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Looking at Joan right now, are you going to continue
to teach about her? Are you going to write about her?
How do you leave her behind? Because I don't know
that any of us easily leave her behind.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
Well, I'm going to say this. When I started this project,
I became very frightened at one point, and I started
saying to those around me, you know, some artists become
obsessed with her, yeah, and can't stop writing and rewriting
her plays about her, for example, it's hard to let
her go. But what I'll say is this, I hope
(54:05):
that this book has opened up a new way of
looking at her legacy. I'm interested in Joan, and I
applaud that, but I hope that people will also become
interested in what writers and artists do with Joan, because
I think that is a really rich legacy and I
(54:26):
know I'll keep working on that. I'm working on her
representation in comics. I talk a little bit about it
in the conclusion, but I want to go further. And
I've come to understand that Joan, we want to tell
her story because we don't think it's been told right,
and in some ways that's acknowledging her as a victim.
And what I try to do in the coda is
(54:47):
show that she's not just a victim. She is a
powerful voice and she opens people up. She gives voice
to people, and I'm hoping that people will see that
side of her and and explore it a little bit
more and the voices she's given to writers and artists
along the way. So that's what I'm hoping.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Well, I think that is a beautiful way to end,
at least this podcast. I mean, I'm going to be
looking into what you do next with Joan, and hopefully
other people will read your book because you have so
much detail about her actual life. But then also how
people are reading her, which is, as you say, so important.
So thank you so much Deborah for being here and
telling us about Joan.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Thank you. I am so honored to be part of
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
To find out more about Debra's work, you can visit
her faculty page at the University of Virginia. Her new
book is Joan of Arc, The Life of a French
Cultural Icon. Before we go, here's Peter from medievalis dot
net to tell us what's on the website. What's up, Peter, Hey, Hey.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
So the big news last week are in medieval circles anyway.
It's from medievalists was to discovery that there was two
individuals in seventh century England and they did DNA tests
on them and they found that they had ancestors, likely
a grandparent who came from West Africa.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
See that's cool. That's the kind of thing where you're like,
I knew it, I knew it.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
Indeed. Indeed, So there was two kinds of separate studies
that were both published in antiquity, and these aren't related
to these individuals. So it's kind of a good question
of how their grandparents came to England. Southern England at
the time so some theories that it may have done
with something related to the Byzantine Empire coming back into
North Africa at the time. But it's very a very
(56:33):
cool this kind of presence here.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
I mean, having a presence of people from Africa is
not surprising to me. But it's great when you have
the DNA evidence where you can say here it is,
We've looked at it. It's awesome. This is one of
the good things about being able to test for DNA.
Speaker 3 (56:48):
So that news is all over a lot of media outlets,
but we have a piece on medievalis dot net. We
also are welcoming two new columnists to the team, all right,
so I'm glad to have more and more writers. Sineami
of the University of Tessalla. She's going to be our
kind of Early Christianity, early Middle Asies correspondent. And her
(57:09):
first piece is on the Council of Nicosia and that's
celebrating it's seventeen hundredth anniversary this year.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
It was a big event. So for people who haven't
heard of the Council of Nicia before, they should check
it out.
Speaker 3 (57:21):
It's something that still resonates in the Christian world today.
It's one of those kind of landmark events in the
history of Christianity. Zoe has her first pieces on that.
I mean, while we also have David Backgrack of the
University of New Hampshire and medieval military historians might remember
that name, so I'm glad to have him. He's pretty
(57:42):
prolific because he's sending me articles. Several articles are already,
so I'm very excited to have that. But his first
one is going to be on the Viking raids into
the Rhyan River Delta, which happened in years one thousand
and six and one thousand and seven, So some nitty
gritty medieval warfare.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
I love it. There are always people interested in the
early part of the Middle Ages, and that's not my specialty,
so you will find me writing about that very often.
It's awesome that you have these new people talking about
the early Middle Ages. That's great.
Speaker 3 (58:11):
You'd love to have new voices coming on midilos dot
net and writing about stuff they love.
Speaker 1 (58:16):
Absolutely well, thank you Peter for coming on and telling
us what's on the website.
Speaker 3 (58:20):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, over
on This is History presents the Glass King. We've just
met the Dolphin Charles, and we'll soon find out just
what he's made of, because there's far more unbelievable history
to come. To find out what happens next, check out
This Is History Presents The Glass King. Thank you to
(58:42):
all of you for supporting my work, either on this
podcast or The Glass King by listening, sharing, letting the
ads play through, and of course by becoming patrons on
Patreon dot com. Patrons are pretty much my favorite people,
because without you, none of this would be possible. To
find out more or to become a patron, please visit
(59:03):
patreon dot com slash Medievalists for everything from Joan of
Arc to the importance of parks. Follow Medievalist dot Net
on Instagram at medievalist net or blue Sky at Medievalists.
You can find me Danielle Sebowski across social media at
fiven Medievalist or five Minute Medievalist, and you can find
(59:24):
my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our music is
by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and have yourself a
wonderful day.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred and three
of the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Sebolski. If
you've been listening to my series This Is History Presents
(00:22):
The Glass King, you'll know we're currently neck deep in
early fifteenth century France, where absolute chaos reigns, and I've
just introduced a new major player, even if he's still
at this moment a minor. You may want to keep
little Prince Charles in mind, because on today's podcast, we're
going to jump ahead to a story he could never
(00:43):
have imagined in those dark times. Because today we're going
to talk about one of my and pretty much everyone's
favorite figures from the Middle Ages, Joan of Arc. This week,
I spoke with doctor Deborah McGrady about the life and
afterlife of Joan of Arc. Debra is Professor of French
and the director of the Medieval Studies Program at the
(01:04):
University of Virginia. She's also the author of many books,
including Controlling Readers, Guillom de Masco and His Late Medieval Audience,
and The Writer's Gift or the Patron's Pleasure, The Literary
Economy in Late Medieval Friends. Her new book is Joan
of Arc The Life of a French cultural icon. Our
(01:25):
conversation on Jones's incredible life and death, her voice and
her legacy is coming up right after this. Well, welcome
Debrah to talk about Joan of Arc. First of all,
I'm excited to talk about Joan of Arc, but secondly
so excited to meet you. And we're already like chatting away.
We need to get to work. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you so much, Danielle. I'm so thrilled to be here.
I'm a huge fan of your podcast, been listening to
it for years.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That is so nice to hear, especially from somebody who
I also respect. Okay, I mean I would love to
do this all day, but let's get to it. Yes,
all right, So Joan of Arc. I think there's going
to be people who are listening to this podcast. You
know a lot about her, but many people who have
just kind of heard of her. So let's start from
the beginning. What's happening in France and when are we
(02:18):
talking about.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Okay, that is a very big question because France, the
Kingdom of France, is a mess at this moment. So
I think the best thing to say from the beginning
is that we are in the throes of what we
call today the Hundred Years War. So when we talk
about the dates of that, you're already going to see
it's bigger than one hundred years. We sort of say
(02:41):
thirteen thirty seven to fourteen fifty three. But some people
you know, point out rightly that this is a problem
that starts in ten sixty six. The problem is the
following in the late thirteen twenties thirteen thirties, the King
of France dies and he has no sign and no brothers,
(03:02):
and so there's not an obvious king to follow him.
And this opens the door to many people presenting themselves,
among them the King of England, representatives from England, and
so this debate already opens up, and what will be
decided is that the cousin of the deceased king, Charles Philip,
(03:24):
will become King of France. And that is a that
is a quick resolution that doesn't stick. And so over
the decades following we constantly have this pushback from England,
in particular, claiming the right to the throne, and this
will lead to some very famous battles your listeners might
(03:46):
know the Battle Cries, the Battle of Poitier, where the
King of France has taken prisoner in the thirteen fifties
fourteen fifteen Asancours and the nobility of France decimated. But
let's leap because what happens particularly is that in fourteen
twenty we have what's called the Treaty of Troy, and
(04:10):
the Treaty of Troy does something really quite shocking. The
sitting King, Charles the sixth, agrees to the following when
he dies, as opposed to his son becoming king, the
King of England, Henry the fifth will become king of
France and England. That's where we are at this moment.
(04:32):
And to make this stick, he disinherits his son, his
son Charles, for many reasons, but among them and it's
all debated, but the biggest one is that Charles has
been accused of having his cousin John the Fearless assassinated.
And that is not just a side thing, because in fact,
(04:52):
just to make this a little messier, Burgundians, when the
Duke was assassinated, align them themselves with the English. And
so in fourteen twenty, when we have this Treaty of
Troy signed France, you know it's in a devastating situation.
I'm going to skip over a whole bunch of messy
(05:13):
things to come to the moment that Joan of Arc
arrives on the scene. At that moment, England has become
even more ambitious with the Burgundians. They control the top
half of France, basically think of the Loire River as
a natural barrier. But they're not satisfied with that. They
want to push beyond the Loire where there are spaces
(05:37):
faithful to the disinherited Charles. And they are currently laying
siege to or Leon and they have been doing so
for several months. The people are starving in Orleon, and
this is going to be the catalyst. This is going
to be the event that provokes Joan to step forward
(05:58):
and to head out on her mission.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So here here we have the stage set, we have
the English and Burgundians and Alliance, and they're taking over everything.
We have to stop them. And so we have a
seat going on at Orlean. So this girl appears. What's happening?
What do we know about her? How's she disappearing out
of nowhere?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That is the eternal question. It is a question that's
been being asked since she appeared on the world stage.
Who is she? I should say, already we know so
much about her, and yet really don't know a whole lot.
We think we know a lot about Joan of Arc
because we have documents that tell us that we're hearing
(06:40):
exactly what she said, But what do we know? So
when she's at trial, she tells us a lot about
her past. She tells us, for instance, that she was
around thirteen when she started hearing voices. She is from
a small village Do Remi that is in the territory,
(07:01):
and therefore she is in the territory that's controlled by
the Anglo Burgundians. Her king is Henry, the sixth King
of France and England, and she's been hearing these voices
for years. She tells us that around the age of seventeen,
the voices have just become so strong and the situation
is so dire that she decides to run away from home,
(07:25):
and she makes her way to a town called Vocular
that is a day's trip away from her and this city,
this town is a holdout in this Anglo Burgundian territory,
a holdout for Charles, and she makes her way there
and convinces the captain that he needs to send her,
(07:48):
send her on her way to the disinherited Charles. So
about Joan, that's what we know. We know a few
other things. We know that, for instance, she's not this
poor past. We know that her family has a pretty
impressive status within her community. Her father is a representative
(08:08):
of that community. We know, for example, that he had
a lot of sheep and cattle, which suggests a level
of importance. But we also know that she was illiterate,
which is not surprising, and that she was very develout.
So those are kinds of the certain things that we
know about her.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yes, And one thing that maybe is worth mentioning here
is that she's not from a place called arc This
is her last name, or at least her dad's last name. Right, Yes,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You know. One of the one things that we think
we know that we actually don't realize to not be
true is that her name is not Joan of arc Y.
She tells us at the trial none of it is correct, honestly,
because she was called Jeanette, little Jonie or Jonie. And
she tells us that in her community you actually and
(09:00):
go by the name of your father. Anyway, you went
by the name of your mother, who was ome made.
So yeah, her name, her name isn't working, but it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
We should note that in her lifetime, no one really
cared about her real name. They called her the Maid,
Lapus said. And one of the reasons they're asking that
question at trial, as a matter of fact, for her
to name herself is because they don't want to call
her the maid, right, they don't want to give her
that illustrious title that it has become for her.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yes, well, no one remembers Madonna's last name either, right,
so it's less important. Okay, So she shows up, she
says I'm here to leave the friend army, and everyone says, sure,
that's fine.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
What happens, Yeah, that's not the way it happens. Let's see,
how does it happen. One of the things that we
need to keep in mind, and people ignore this, is
that she's not the first woman to come forward saying
I have a vision from God. As a matter of fact,
there are so many women doing it at this time
(10:03):
that the church has organized and created a document to
help the clergy interview these women. It's called discernment of spirits,
and Deborah Frioli does a wonderful job in early debate
on Joan of Arc of explaining why that's important to
her story. So there's already a tradition of this, a
(10:27):
tradition of young women, specifically young women who are virgins,
and that's what Poussin the maiden or maid means, who
have this tradition. So the fact that she comes forward
and says to the Captain Baudricour, look, I have a vision.
I've been sent from God. It's something you really don't
(10:47):
fool around with, and it's one of the reasons why
they send her forward. Now I'm going to say something
else too. The other thing is we are in a
terrible situation in the French Kingdom at this point point,
and honestly, it's only a miracle that's going to change
the situation. So if you have someone come forward and
say I'm except from God, that sounds like a miracle
(11:09):
to me. And there's a third thing that people don't
talk about ever, except for I would say Bernard Shaw
in his place Saint Joan from the nineteen twenties, and
that is that clearly, in my opinion, Joan of Arc
was a very persuasive young woman, and that is possible.
She had to have not just the spiritual on her side,
(11:30):
but she also had to really be a persuasive figure
to convince all of these men to listen to her.
So I think that that's kind of there's a build
up for her. She is persuasive and the kingdom needs
a miracle.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes, well, I think that it's probably something we're going
to get into a bit later where some people are
saying she's so innocent, she's just a girl. But this
woman is incredibly intelligent, and you can tell this from
the way that she starts to deal with the doctor
of the church, who are interrogating her many times later.
But this is her first time she's tested by religious people,
and she passes, and she gets passed on to the Dauphin,
(12:10):
and then there's a little story about meeting him. Right
she's introduced to the Dauphin. But there's a trick here.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
There is a trick here, and it's a trick being
played on her, and that is rumor, it's a legend,
maybe truth, but that he traded places with someone. And
then she walks into the room and despite having traded places,
she is able to identify Charles among the crowd, and
(12:37):
this will be considered at the time one of her
first miracles by some people. So that happens, and then
she meets with him privately, she talks with him. She
must persuade him enough that he thinks, I think I'm
going to pass her on, and so he passes her
(12:59):
on to a group of clergymen representing the church, but
representing the Catholic Church, a part of the church that
supports Charles claims to the throne. And that's important because
we're going to see a division within the Catholic Church
as a matter of fact, as it concerns Joan. So
she's going through the stages. She's going through the stages.
(13:22):
But yeah, there's that story about her recognizing Charles.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's one of those things where you know it's probably
a legend, but it's so good you can't pass it up.
We have to add that story in there. So she
is trained up and she's thrown at Orleans, and she
must have all these commanders looking at her like who
is this person? But she goes for it. So what
do we know about maybe her tactics at Orleans, she's
trained up a little bit, she's gotten jacked, she's headed
(13:51):
for Orleon.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yes, yes, what about her tactics at or Leon? I'm
not very well positioned to talk about the literal tactics
that she used. But what I will say is that
twenty five years after her execution, there was a trial
of the trial, and we might come back to that later,
but at that trial, testimonies were collected, and among them
(14:17):
several from the captains and soldiers who worked with her,
And what we learned from them is that, contrary to
what we often believe, they found her to be really skilled.
We have captains say that she was better than any
general they had ever seen in their life. We had
(14:38):
squires say that they were just amazed at how she
would run out onto the field in the front, raising
her sword or holding her lance. We have people talk
about her training in anticipation of Orleans. We have one
of her squires talk about how she met every evening
(15:00):
with the captains to talk about strategy, and one particularly
says she was particularly gifted with canons. So we have
the sense that she had a military mind. Often that's said,
and it was said by the captains at the time,
they said, there's your proof she was sent by God,
(15:22):
because how could she have that? But you know, I
tend to think that you have that case.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Today.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You have men and women who are savvy about military
strategy just from the get go, and so it seems
that that was her case. So again, but I will
to come back to legends and miracles. One of her
second miracles is said to have been that when she
arrives at Orleon, the wind is going the wrong direction
(15:50):
for them to advance on Orleon, and one of the
captains says, she goes off and she prays, and he
couldn't believe it. The wind changed and they were able
to advance with the attack. So I can't get into
the strategy about it. The strategy is out of my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
That's okay, that's okay. This is probably a moment where
if Kelly Defreese is listening, he's like, this is me. Yes,
Kelly has written a book about that for people who
want to know specifically about strategy. But one of the
things that is important strategy are not because it is
vital and something that was always thought of as being
important in the Middle Ages. So it's not a surprise
is morale, and that is something that unquestionably she has
(16:33):
lifted when she goes to the siege, she lifts the
siege of Orleans, and then it's just like a tidal
wave behind her because for the first time in a
long time, they think maybe we can win this.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
That is absolutely true, and Orleon. She's remembered for Leon,
and until this day, every May a city of Orleans
there's a huge celebration about her. But that's not the
only battle she won there. They went on to take
several towns along the Loire River that had been recently
(17:07):
taken by the English, and so she has a whole
series of victories. She and the army with her so
much so that the moment comes where she says, you know,
we're ready to move on. We are ready now to
really declare Charles as the true king of France. And
(17:28):
they're going to head out. They're going to head north
to France, which is in Anglo Burgundian territory. And along
the way you're going to see that they're sending letters
in advance to cities saying you know, we're going to
take you, and many of these cities say, no, need
to take us, we're here, we're going to hand over
the keys right through. So her reputation is preceding her,
(17:52):
and she is really marking a major change both in
the war itself. But as you said in the.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Morale, well, one of the things that you spend a
lot of time on in your book is her own words,
which are slippery and hard to pin down. But she's
sending letters, as you're mentioning at this time, they're spicy.
What is she saying in her letters at this time?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So you know, we know of twenty seven letters that
are said to have been dictated by Joan, because of
course Joan is illiterate. All of the letters that we have,
yeah some of them. One of her first, her first
and most famous letter, is a letter to the English,
and this is coming right after the Church has said, okay, Charles,
(18:39):
this is what we refer to as the Plotier conclusions,
and they say to Charles, you know you need to
give her an army and send her to au Leon.
And immediately thereafter we have this letter addressed to the
English where she says, the maid is here to tell
you you get out or we're going to take you.
(19:00):
And so it's a very aggressive letter. Now, one of
the things that I talk about in my book is
that we really need to be careful with this, and
we need to understand that maybe she is dictating. I'm
sure I have no problem imagining that. Joan said, Now
we can write the English and tell them we're on
our way. But she's going through a secretary, and we
(19:21):
know who that secretary is. And when we read that letter,
it is very clear that someone is helping her write it.
The rhetoric is very evolved. It is very typical for
this type of war announcement, which are required, and she's
making lots of references. So what I try to talk
(19:42):
about is this fact that first we have her voice
being used and in that particular letter, for instance, it
will come up at her trial and they will read
the letter out and Joan will say, yes, that's the
letter I dictated, except for three parts. There are three
words in there I never said. So we see that
(20:04):
it's not all Joan. They're helping her shape her identity.
And one of the arguments is that from the very
beginning there is an effort to shape her as an
iconic figure.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yes, I think that is unquestionable, and I think you've
really laid that argument out well in your book. Okay,
So she reaches sort of the pinnacle of her career,
she goes to Rant, she gets the Dophin crowned. What
is this moment like for her? What is this moment
like for the dolphin?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, what is this moment like? Well, it's incredibly important.
You know. It's one thing to say you're king, and
Charles had been saying this. It is another thing to
go to Rence and to repeat the traditions that's from
the very beginning of being crowned there. This is an
extraordinary moment for him. It should have been an extraordinary
(20:57):
moment for Joan, but the evidence suggest it was not
at all. Evidence suggests that she was not really allowed
to participate. And that's not too surprising because it is
a ceremony that usually doesn't allow women. But we really
mark this as a point where the separation in the
intentions of now King Charles and the intentions of Joan
(21:22):
go opposite directions. And what I mean by that is
that Joan says, apparently, now we're ready to take Paris.
It's great, we've crowned you in Rance, but the real
throne is in Paris. Meanwhile, we know that Charles wasn't
interested in going back to Paris. He hated Paris, and
he was actually in negotiations to see to Paris to
(21:45):
the Burgundians. And so a lot of tension comes up
at this point, and we see a growing separation between
these two figures and an increasing isolation. Joan is really
not finding her place, and that contradicts a lot of
what we think a lot of the stories that are told,
but that is the reality.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, And I think it goes to show just how
much of an outsider she is, because anyone who has
met Charles knows he will just turn on you as
soon as he gets what he wants. He's done this,
I mean, he's assassinated his cousin, So like, I think
that there are a lot of people that are like, WHOA,
don't trust this guy, But she's she's so convinced, and
(22:28):
she has faith in him, I think, not just in
her voices, but she has faith in him. He's the king,
He's supposed to do what's right, but he doesn't necessarily
do what's right for her. So people may not actually
know this much about the story, but things do start
to go off the rails for her. People start actually
leaving her out of campaigns right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Exactly, and she is specifically Charles will be sending her
further and further away from things. Now. She's determined about Paris, however,
and so she leaves without being sanctioned by the king.
She leaves, and she goes to Paris with her little
group of faithful followers, and she's outside of Paris and
(23:12):
she's waiting for the king to show up, and during
that time she's writing letters. Now we're beginning to see
within these dictated letters a difference between the official stance
of the royal court, the royal French court, and Joan.
And we see Joan writing, for example, to Rence and
(23:34):
to other cities, saying, I'm taking Paris and I don't
agree with the negotiations that Charles has made with the
Duke of Burgundy. I don't trust the Duke of Burgundy.
So we have evidence, not often studied, but we have
evidence of this division being created. But note she's never
(23:54):
going to turn on Charles, and that comes back to
your point. She believes that Charles is meant to be
the King of France. Whether she thinks he's doing it,
the right way, or he's up to the battle, that's
another issue. But she's clear minded, and he is supposed
to be the king of all of the Kingdom of France.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yes, and this is something that's never occurred to me before.
But maybe it has something to do with the fact
that she is so persuasive that she's just like really
frustrated with this guy. Why is he not understanding, like,
this is her mission and she's explained it to him.
Why is he not showing up to Paris? This just
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Absolutely, absolutely, she is utterly certain. Now. One thing that
is also interesting is that she's far exceeded her mission.
She will acknowledge at trial that she was not told
to go to Paris. She says, the voices told me
(24:53):
to go to to Leon. The voices told me to
take the king to France. She admits that the voices
did not tell her to go to Paris, and so
this becomes a real contentious point. And the fact is
is that he finally does show up at Paris, He
finally okays for her to advance on Paris, and it
(25:17):
is a route. It is a disaster, and she is
wounded for the second time because she was wounded in
Orleans as well. And this is really the beginning of
the end of Jones's story really on the public stage, because,
as my book says, if we stop just with the
living Jone, we've missed really a big story because she
(25:38):
keeps living on. She's alive and well in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Okay, it's true and one of the things that maybe
it is worth mentioning. When we imagine Paris, you imagine
like the city, but it was so formidable at this
moment that very difficult to take. So it's no shame
on not being able to take Paris. It was just
a formidable to try and take in the first place. Okay,
(26:02):
So she's still trying to take down, She's still trying
to be involved, even though she's getting more and more son.
She gets captured, yes, and this I think is also
confusing to people because she gets captured by the Burgundians.
And I think if people hadn't heard your preamble here
about this alliance that the Burgundians have with the English,
(26:23):
maybe it's confusing. So she's captured by Burgundians. What happens next?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
She's captured nearly almost a year, just a little over
a year after the Siege of Orleans. So we're talking
about a very brief time on that public stage, captured
by the Burgundians, sold to the English. The English are
then persuaded by the church, by the Catholic Church to
(26:52):
hand her over because they suspect her of heresy. And
so the English hand or over. We have an amazing
level are issued by the King of England and France, Henry,
and he says, I'm handing her over, but if you
don't do what we expect to be done, we're taking
(27:13):
a wreck. So they hand her over and over the
next year she will be interrogated and then tried for
heresy by representatives of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yes, and at this moment Charles is scrambling to get
a ransom together and get a rescue party together. Right, Well,
we don't.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Have any evidence of that. What we do have evidence
of is that one of her companions, soldier companions Lay,
apparently was trying to gather money. We have record of
a letter that she sent when she was in captivity
asking one of the cities to send her money. We
(27:58):
presume it's because she thought that there might be some ransom,
but we don't have anything. We have no record of
Charles trying to help get Joan out of there. It's
a disturbing silence.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yes, And you mentioned in the book people are kind
of loath to look at this moment, but I think
we should look at this moment. So she's this nineteen
year old girl, she's in masculine clothes, she's got a
man's haircut, and so she's already sort of a freak
in people's minds. She's being captured, she's been jailed by
(28:35):
her mortal enemies, who she's poked dead with a stick,
and so this is a dangerous, horrible moment for anybody,
but especially for this girl. So it's not her female
in this I'm referring to. It's the fact that she's young,
and she's never been in this situation before, and her
captor's wife has to tell the soldiers leave her alone.
(28:56):
And so I think this gives you a sense that
this is a terror again for anybody, but especially for
someone so young who's never never been in a situation
like this before.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Danielle, I think that we have to recognize that she
becomes unbelievably vulnerable precisely because she is a girl and
it's so disturbing I can't I read it today, and
I get really upset when I'm studying the trial because
I realize that she was just put in such a
(29:30):
vulnerable position. You mentioned the captor's wife coming forward and saying,
don't rape her. She needs to protect it, and her
vulnerability as a woman will really be spotlighted, and her
situation that is being dressed in men's clothing and with
(29:51):
short hair will become key to her representation not as
a warrior, but as a monstrass. And those are the
words monster and monstrosity that will be used both by
the King of England and by this court that comes
together to try her.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I think you're making great points here. I think I'm
always wanting to edge away from the idea if I
say somebody is weak and frightened, it's not their femaleness
that makes them weak, I guess, is what I'm saying.
But yes, absolutely, her gendered body is the crux of
the whole thing when it comes to how are we
going to destroy this woman? Because that's the mission. We
(30:33):
need to destroy this woman. This is the way to
do it, This is the easiest way to do it,
and that's exactly what they go for.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's right. And so one of the things I talk
about in the book that has not received a lot
of attention. We look at the trial and we're just
so amazed that we have our words right then select citation,
but we don't take a lot of time to think
about how that trial orcs straits her presence in the courtroom.
(31:03):
And one of the things that I think we need
to keep in mind is that, for example, they keep
her in men's clothing. And this is really key because
we have a report from a historian historiographer at the
court of Burgundy that when she was first captured. This
is a terrible story. It's very upsetting that she was
(31:24):
brought before the Duke of Burgundy and she was stripped naked,
and the historiographer details her naked body. That's already terribly upsetting.
But you know, when I was thinking about that, I thought,
they're so insistent that there's a woman under that clothing.
So why did they put her back in men's clothing?
(31:47):
Why did they keep her And as I say, she
was captured in armor, someone gave her clothing men's clothing?
Was it her own clothing? Don't know, we don't know,
but she was put in men's clothing, and when she
arrives before the court in February, she walks into that
(32:08):
room in men's clothing. We don't know if they were
clean or dirty. I suspect they were dirty. She has
chained as if she's some kind of dangerous, monstrous figure,
and she's brought into that room with two guards on
each side of her. So there's a real effort to
insist on the fact that this is a girl dressed
(32:32):
as a man.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Absolutely. I think that is so important because there's one
point where you have this in your book where they're like,
do you want a dress, and she's like, yes, give
me a dress. I don't need it right now, and
I'm wearing armor, so I'll put it on. And then
they're like, well, no, that's against what we're trying to prove.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And even more than that, I just have to point
out that that's in the first days she says, give
me a dress, and then suddenly we read the trial
that suddenly, for no appair at reason, the day's interrogation ends,
and I like to think, why, you know, I don't believe,
And Daniel Hobbins makes this point. I don't believe that
(33:12):
everyone in that court was against Joan Fooley. I think
there might have been some voices that were like, this
is a young woman, come on, give her a break.
And when she said that, I can imagine that some
of them said give her the dress. I can imagine
that it went into pandemonium. And we have testimony from
the notary later that said, yeah, there were a lot
(33:35):
of times I couldn't keep up with what was being
said because people are screaming in all directions. But she says,
give me a dress, and they do not, and comes
the crux of the accusations against her.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yes, And I don't think that we are spending too
much time on this because I think one of the
things we're talking about her legend as well. One of
the things people say is like she's burned as a witch.
There is no witchcraft involved here at all. And I
think that she had been through a trial before this,
not a trial, but an investigation before this. They said
that her voices were holy, so it's really not even
(34:10):
about that either. They had it out for her. She
was going to be destroyed for something, and it really
is this stressing in men's clothes presenting herself and doing
manly things. That is really a big problem for people.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
It is a big problem. But I will say this
and again Daniel Hobbins makes this point that these men
who are interrogating and trying her, they are doing due diligence,
and in the end they make sure if you read
carefully the doctrine of discernment of spirits and then you
(34:46):
look at the questioning and the final charges, they make
it very clear there's good reason to see her as
a heretic. She does these things. Now. The image, however,
is also extremely important, so they do their due diligence
and prove her to be a heretic. But her image,
presenting her NonStop and court in men's clothing, it's making
(35:10):
a profound visual point.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yes, again, heresy is an important part of it. Not
trying to downplay it, but it's I guess it's hard
to show what is the final straw. And I think
it's both of these things together, not one so far
above the other that we're saying like, it's definitely this thing.
Thank you for keeping me honest on track, because I'm
I want to be communicating this clearly and I'm glad
(35:34):
that you're keeping keeping me honest. Okay, So let's talk
about the trial transcript, because this is a fascinating one
of the most fascinating documents I've ever come across. Here
she is and she's speaking, and one of the things
that you said we really need to be careful of
is like, is this her voice or not? So tell
us what are some of the things you have to
consider looking at this and trying to understand her voice?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Great question. The trial record we have have was created
after her execution. It is based on the notes of
the notaries in the room, and we can't imagine that
they're taking precise notes. I already evoked the challenges they face.
They're taking shorthand, and that shorthand was meant to help
(36:21):
the jury, if you will, or the interrogators at the
end of the day, to think what do we need
to ask again tomorrow? Right, So that's the basis of it.
It's produced in fourteen thirty one, after her execution. And
one of the things that has always been said is, oh,
we have Jones words, and you know, we can hear
(36:42):
Joan tell her own story. But one of the points
I make is that we do have direct citation, but
it's very selective directcitation, and I can guarantee you that
anything they cite directly it is not to make us
feel compassion for Joan. It's to show she's a heretic.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So, for instance, in the first few days we have
over and over again, it's quite tedious. We constantly hear
how she refuses to take the oath. Why is that
what we're going to spend all our time talking about?
Because that goes to the point that she is not
respecting the church. And so when we read that document,
(37:29):
the notary tells us in fourteen fifties, everything that's in
that text is true. He says, she said it, I
went over it, she went over it. She even listened
to the text read back to her and approved it.
But that doesn't mean that we can take it as
(37:49):
transparent truth. And I think that's one of the great
challenges here. We go to the trial record to try
to bring justice to an injustice done to Joan of arc,
but we need to remember that we're using a document
that was intended to confirm that she is a heretic.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, And I think one of the things that really
jumps out is the moments where she's frustrated or she's obstinate,
where she's like, why aren't you writing that down? I
just said that that makes me look good. Why aren't
you not writing that down? And it's so she's so frustrated.
But I think it probably is meant to color the
testimony so that you feel like, Wow, she's so obstinate.
(38:33):
She's very unwomanly and very anti Catholic.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Absolutely, So I get to teach the trial of Joan
of Arc to my students and I let them read
it and just come in and tell me what they think.
They always come in and go, she's so rambunctious, she's
so outspoken, And then we slowly unwrap and look more
closely to realize, I think it's not rambunctious. Was the
(38:57):
message the authors wanted you to have. And one of
the things that happens with this trial record is they
in fact make five copies, of which we have three today.
And these copies of this trial are really complex. They
are surrounded by a lot of documentation that is intended
(39:18):
to help any reader understand you are not supposed to
admire this young woman. As a matter of fact, one
of the last text in There is just a brief
little paragraph to let you know that right after her execution,
a religious figure, a clergyman protested, A friar protested, and
(39:39):
he's jailed. He's put in jail on bread and water
for challenging the court. So if you didn't get the
message there, it is do not question the decision that's
been made here.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yes, and I think this comes back around to that
idea of the hair as he has to be proved
because it had been disproved before, so we have to
prove it again. And so it is very meticulous. Here
are the points in which she strayed from church doctrine. Okay,
she's actually brought out she's going to be executed, and
she recants, and I think this is something that people
(40:13):
forget as well, and I think this is so important.
She is about to be executed and she backs down
and she recants and says, I was wrong. I will
take the women's dress, just let me pray among women.
And these voices were demons. I recognize that now, and
I just think that this is just such an important
moment in the understanding of this person that we can't
(40:34):
forget about this moment.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yes, because she does recant, and then she's sentenced to
life in prison and not in a women's prison, and
she is required to change into women's clothing and she's
put into a prison where her guards are the English,
and just a few days later, she recants, She abjures
(41:00):
what she had said, and they come to her cell
and somehow she's dressed again in men's clothing and she says,
I was wrong. Out of fear of fire, I told
you I no longer believed in my voices, but I do.
I believe in everything I said. And she specifically says
everything that I said in the trial that's in the
(41:23):
book I stand by. And this has dire consequences because
now she is a relapsed heretic, and this happens very quickly.
She is very quickly excommunicated. And when she's excommunicated, this
is a public event. Is happening. They excommunicator publicly, and
(41:44):
lo and behold, representatives of the English government are standing
there ready. As a matter of fact, they have a stake,
They have it all set. They take Joan and without
doing the civil trial that should have occurred, they immediately
execute her right then and there.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
What do you think happened? Because I think if I'm
remembering this correctly, When they go to see her a
few days later, she says, you broke your promises to me,
and therefore I'm taking it all back. I believe in
my voices. I don't care about this fire anymore. Burmi,
if you have to, what do you think happened?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
That's a really good question. I think it's probably one
of the core points where everyone has their own interpretation
of it. She says that she has betrayed her voices,
she has betrayed God. Others will say she just saw
(42:45):
this is going to be endless torture. There are people
who will say, twenty five years later, look, she was
being threatened with rape. And then other people will say
she thought she could be powerful enough to push back
and that she still had a little bit of power
so that she could say, you know, you're going to
do right by me. But whatever the reason that inspired her,
(43:09):
she does say in the end, she says that you know,
would she would rather die than live this endless time
as a prisoner. That's a line that people don't like
to hear because it sounds like she gave up, you know,
she lost hope. Who knows who knows what happens, but
(43:30):
she didn't have another chance to back down on that.
It was done at that point.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes, So what was the mood as she's being executed?
Speaker 2 (43:40):
What do we know? We don't know a lot, but
some of the things we know. Some of the things
we can surmise from what results. Well, I've already told
you that a friar immediately protests. We find from the
testimony later it just seems very poignant accounts from people
(44:01):
who were there, old men now who say, I was
in my twenties and thirties, I couldn't bear it. I
had to walk away, I couldn't watch it. Others say
that even even the English soldiers were crying. Rumor that
some of the men of the church were saying, we've
made a major mistake, We've burnt a saint. So there
(44:23):
was a lot of crisis going on there. You know,
it's one thing to talk about killing and hating someone,
it's another to see them bred at the stake. And
in Paris, this is being publicized so whole. In Paris,
it's being publicized, and there's a whole event going on there.
(44:43):
The news is traveling fast and far, and part of
writing up the trial is precisely because the news spreads
so quickly and people are so divided about whether this
was right or wrong, that they produced that trial record
to defend themselves. As I mentioned in the book, a
(45:05):
couple months after this, an intrepid traveler from the Burgundian
court arrives in Constantinople and he tells us one of
the first things he's asked is did this Joan of
Arc girl really exist? And did you really kill her?
So it was a big and debatable topic, and that
(45:25):
debate did not end. It did not end with her execution.
And I think that's one of the most powerful things
they thought. If they burned her, they destroyed all evidence
of her. They threw all of the ashes into the river,
and all of her clothing, everything in her cell they
got rid of. But they could not kill the story.
(45:45):
They definitely could not kill the story. And that's why
she lives, that's why her legend continues.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yes, yes, they're meticulous about this. I've been spending a
lot of time with the man who becomes Charles the Seventh,
and he escape this legacy of Joan either and there's
probably a lot of people giving him the side eye
for allowing this to happen in ways that he didn't
need to. So what you're destering to is Charles has
been on the throne for a while and he's like,
(46:13):
it's time to rehabilitate this woman. So what happens in
the fourteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
In the fourteen fifties, this is coming from outside of
the court. So you see an Orleone and especially Jones family,
her brothers and her mother begin petitioning that we should
revisit this case, and so we will have a trial
in the fourteen fifties. It's important that we can do this.
(46:40):
They can do this because they've just taken hul and
so now they have access to the documents, and so
Charles the Seventh will sanction. He will sanction this investigation.
It's very legal because they don't retry Joan, they try
(47:01):
the trial. The case is the trial was not conducted correctly,
and so to that end, they begin gathering witness reports
and I mentioned those earlier. They're going to go to
Doheimi or Leon. They're going to talk to soldiers, they're
going to talk to her captors, they're going to talk
(47:24):
to the nerve, They're going to gather hundreds of witness
testimonies to prove especially that this was a misguided trial
and that they did not follow the rules. But among
the questions they're asking, they want to make sure that
everybody understands that Joan was a victim, that she was
(47:48):
a good Christian girl, and that she was a victim.
And I think that's one of the one of the
many things that frustrates me about her story, because that
second trial, that was incredible, because as you mentioned, it's
often called the rehabilitation trial. It's recognized as rehabilitating Joan.
But I just find it so disappointing that that trial
(48:11):
takes her, takes the heretic and makes her a victim.
And I would have much rather her come out of
that as a war hero, for example. And other people
might say I would have much rather her come out
as as a saint. As your listeners may or may
not know, she's not going to become a saint until
(48:33):
nineteen twenty. It's highly debatable, but it's something that comes
from the outside. This retrial, it takes several years, is
fourteen fifty two to fourteen fifty six, Charles the Seventh Sanctions,
It and endorses it. It's good for him, because there's
nothing good about being on a throne and being put
there by a heretic. You do kind of have to
(48:55):
fix that little storyline. So that's how that plays out.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yes, well, I mean, if you're gonna rehabilitate someone in
this center, you've got to take all of the things
that make her free kish off of her. So we
have to make her very orthodox and very girly. And
so one of the things that you explore in the
book is her legacy afterwards. And for a while, there
are a lot of pictures of her looking very gurly.
(49:21):
She's got this long hair and she's got a long dress,
and she's like looking heavenward as she's being tied to
this stake. But then she morphs again and she never
stops morphing. But there is a push in the early
nineteen hundred's to get her made a saint. What's going
on here, So it's very much linked to the political
(49:42):
situation France. One of the reasons the book really focuses
on the legacy in France is because, my goodness, the
history of Joan in France there's just so many layers.
There's such sedimentation, and so it really starts with the
Franco Prussian War in the eighteen seventies eighteen seventy seventy one,
(50:05):
because Lorraine, where Jonas from, becomes highly contested territory and
Joan emerges as an iconic figure. She's also going to remain.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
This national iconic figure through the First World War and
throughout this. In the eighteen nineties we really start seeing
the first push from the Bishop of Arleon Dupernun to
have her canonized, and it's always going to be linked
to this issue of her being a French national figure
(50:39):
and a saint. And between the wars there is a
push from the French right because the left is gaining
important grounds politically and they are working with the Vatican
to push Joan forward in fear that she is going
to be co opted by the left. And so she
(51:01):
becomes a very political figure already at the moment that
she becomes a saint, and you just cannot unravel the
political and the religious component of this. And today she's
considered one of France's patron saints. Right, so again you
(51:23):
may know your listeners may know that in the nineteen
eighties she became the symbol of the far right Full Nasionan,
which is now the Rassin brumon Nan, a very far
right xenophobic movement, and so she's always been linked to.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
This, Yes, And it's interesting when you think about it,
because I mean, I've done a bunch of episodes lately
about people who are not who we think they are,
and for someone like Joan, who is very much about
let me tell you who I am, so many people
have I've been telling her who she is over time,
and so it's just very interesting for somebody who was
(52:05):
very concerned about her identity at least as far as
it was useful to her project, that other people are
telling her who she is. Now.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Half of the book is really looking at that legacy,
and it's looking especially at artists, writers, sculptors, painters, etc.
Dramatists who take on Joanes's story. And I think part
of it is so often because these individuals recognize, Gosh,
for all the effort and all of the documentation we
(52:37):
have of Joan's voice, there's this sense that her story
has always been co opted. And I try to make
the point that this isn't new, it's not modern. This
starts when she steps on the stage, it generates a
great deal of things, a desire in many to try
to bring justice to her story. And what I found,
(52:59):
especially in which goes into another route your listeners maybe
they'll read these chapters, is to really notice that when
you pick up Joan and you decide to tell her story,
you find that there are so many other issues that
come up, and she really becomes a catalyst for asking
very big social, philosophical, spiritual, political questions. She makes that possible,
(53:27):
and to me, that's one of the amazing parts of
her legacy.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Looking at Joan right now, are you going to continue
to teach about her? Are you going to write about her?
How do you leave her behind? Because I don't know
that any of us easily leave her behind.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
Well, I'm going to say this. When I started this project,
I became very frightened at one point, and I started
saying to those around me, you know, some artists become
obsessed with her, yeah, and can't stop writing and rewriting
her plays about her, for example, it's hard to let
her go. But what I'll say is this, I hope
(54:05):
that this book has opened up a new way of
looking at her legacy. I'm interested in Joan, and I
applaud that, but I hope that people will also become
interested in what writers and artists do with Joan, because
I think that is a really rich legacy and I
(54:26):
know I'll keep working on that. I'm working on her
representation in comics. I talk a little bit about it
in the conclusion, but I want to go further. And
I've come to understand that Joan, we want to tell
her story because we don't think it's been told right,
and in some ways that's acknowledging her as a victim.
And what I try to do in the coda is
(54:47):
show that she's not just a victim. She is a
powerful voice and she opens people up. She gives voice
to people, and I'm hoping that people will see that
side of her and and explore it a little bit
more and the voices she's given to writers and artists
along the way. So that's what I'm hoping.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Well, I think that is a beautiful way to end,
at least this podcast. I mean, I'm going to be
looking into what you do next with Joan, and hopefully
other people will read your book because you have so
much detail about her actual life. But then also how
people are reading her, which is, as you say, so important.
So thank you so much Deborah for being here and
telling us about Joan.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Thank you. I am so honored to be part of
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
To find out more about Debra's work, you can visit
her faculty page at the University of Virginia. Her new
book is Joan of Arc, The Life of a French
Cultural Icon. Before we go, here's Peter from medievalis dot
net to tell us what's on the website. What's up, Peter, Hey, Hey.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
So the big news last week are in medieval circles anyway.
It's from medievalists was to discovery that there was two
individuals in seventh century England and they did DNA tests
on them and they found that they had ancestors, likely
a grandparent who came from West Africa.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
See that's cool. That's the kind of thing where you're like,
I knew it, I knew it.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
Indeed. Indeed, So there was two kinds of separate studies
that were both published in antiquity, and these aren't related
to these individuals. So it's kind of a good question
of how their grandparents came to England. Southern England at
the time so some theories that it may have done
with something related to the Byzantine Empire coming back into
North Africa at the time. But it's very a very
(56:33):
cool this kind of presence here.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
I mean, having a presence of people from Africa is
not surprising to me. But it's great when you have
the DNA evidence where you can say here it is,
We've looked at it. It's awesome. This is one of
the good things about being able to test for DNA.
Speaker 3 (56:48):
So that news is all over a lot of media outlets,
but we have a piece on medievalis dot net. We
also are welcoming two new columnists to the team, all right,
so I'm glad to have more and more writers. Sineami
of the University of Tessalla. She's going to be our
kind of Early Christianity, early Middle Asies correspondent. And her
(57:09):
first piece is on the Council of Nicosia and that's
celebrating it's seventeen hundredth anniversary this year.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
It was a big event. So for people who haven't
heard of the Council of Nicia before, they should check
it out.
Speaker 3 (57:21):
It's something that still resonates in the Christian world today.
It's one of those kind of landmark events in the
history of Christianity. Zoe has her first pieces on that.
I mean, while we also have David Backgrack of the
University of New Hampshire and medieval military historians might remember
that name, so I'm glad to have him. He's pretty
(57:42):
prolific because he's sending me articles. Several articles are already,
so I'm very excited to have that. But his first
one is going to be on the Viking raids into
the Rhyan River Delta, which happened in years one thousand
and six and one thousand and seven, So some nitty
gritty medieval warfare.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
I love it. There are always people interested in the
early part of the Middle Ages, and that's not my specialty,
so you will find me writing about that very often.
It's awesome that you have these new people talking about
the early Middle Ages. That's great.
Speaker 3 (58:11):
You'd love to have new voices coming on midilos dot
net and writing about stuff they love.
Speaker 1 (58:16):
Absolutely well, thank you Peter for coming on and telling
us what's on the website.
Speaker 3 (58:20):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, over
on This is History presents the Glass King. We've just
met the Dolphin Charles, and we'll soon find out just
what he's made of, because there's far more unbelievable history
to come. To find out what happens next, check out
This Is History Presents The Glass King. Thank you to
(58:42):
all of you for supporting my work, either on this
podcast or The Glass King by listening, sharing, letting the
ads play through, and of course by becoming patrons on
Patreon dot com. Patrons are pretty much my favorite people,
because without you, none of this would be possible. To
find out more or to become a patron, please visit
(59:03):
patreon dot com slash Medievalists for everything from Joan of
Arc to the importance of parks. Follow Medievalist dot Net
on Instagram at medievalist net or blue Sky at Medievalists.
You can find me Danielle Sebowski across social media at
fiven Medievalist or five Minute Medievalist, and you can find
(59:24):
my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our music is
by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and have yourself a
wonderful day.
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